Page 18 - Lulu and Bob in Verbo City

Uncle Bunster’s living room, in contrast to the rest of his house,
emanated an aura of respectability, to the point of boringness. He
had little use for it other than to entertain guests whom he probably
wished would sense the oppressive dullness of the place and make an
early but polite departure. Its furnishings, fittings and décor
suggested the result of a hasty afternoon’s round of junk shops and
secondhand furniture stores. The twins, now well-seasoned hunters
of the wily sesquipedalians and totally focused on the remainder of
the missing words, made short work of it.
“Here’s ‘omphaloskeptically,’ Lulu—looped around the navel of
this glazed porcelain Buddha on the coffee table. No traction on that
surface! That’s another!”
“Indeed,” said Bob’s twin sister. “We’ll take it. But you’re both
wrong: that’s not Buddha. It’s Ho Tai, god of prosperity: no need for
him to navel-gaze!”
“Don’t be so snotty! If we’d ignored the statuette because it wasn’t
Buddha, we would have missed it. And here’s ‘prestidigitational’: it
had to be on this antique poster advertising a performance by Kellar
and his Perplexing Cabinet of Mysteries.”
“Put it in. I think we’ll find another around the piano.” Lulu went
to the instrument, a battered old baby grand adorned with a tattered
Spanish shawl. She found “quasihemidemisemiquaver” bent into
contortions on the staves of an open page of sheet music.
Bob checked the list. “That’s nineteen we’ve retrieved. The
twentieth is ‘conversationalists.’ What could there be in here to match
that word?”
“I don’t know,” moaned Lulu. “Is it on us? We’re talking. No.
Well, this is end of the line: we’ve gone through every room in the
house. Do we have to make the rounds again? Uncle is overdue now.
What should we do?”

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